ALISA ZYKOVA

CM 204 Research Paper

"The Camera as The Photographer's Brush and

Voice"
Humans are essentially visual creatures, seeing as sight is one of the most stimulated

senses. We see thousand of images every day, some of which our mind retains and some

of which are discarded. Images can come in many forms, be it illustration, artwork,

photography or events from reality itself. In this article, I wish to explore the mechanism

and philosophy behind photography, how it affects both the viewer and the photographer.

Photography is special, not only because it is a unique medium, but also because

photographs allow events to be immortalised. It allows for events to be documented,

history to be recorded within a separate realm, distinguishable from reality because it is

allowed to exist outside itself. Emotions can be captured, metamorphosed into a single

vivid picture. However, the problems which arise out of the concept of photography

revolve around the classification of photographs and the intentions of the photographer.

Furthermore, it is necessary to explore the notion of objectivity.

Marius De Zayas, in his article "Photography and Photography and Artistic

Photography", declares that photography is not an art, in spite of the fact that photographs

can be labelled as art. He writes:

"When man uses the camera without any preconceived idea of final results, when he uses

the camera as a means to penetrate the objective reality of facts, to acquire a truth,

which he tries to represent by itself and not by adapting it to any system of emotional

representation, then, man is doing Photography."

(De Zayas, pg. 130)

The problem with the above statement is that it disregards the fact that it is practically

impossible to not to input personality or emotional essence into a photograph. Even if the

purpose of taking a picture is to record reality and truth, a photographer injects his own

self into the picture. The frame of a photograph, its contents and what exactly it depicts

are ways in which a photographer reflects his spirit within the photograph. It is in this

way that there is emotional representation. Of course, this may lead to the conclusion that

objectivity does not exist in photography, and that this may invoke the title of "artist" to

every photographer. That is saying, that in this context an "artist" will be defined as

someone who wishes to project his ideas, his thoughts, his emotions and a part of himself

into his art.

Owen Barfield claims the following:

"...the camera is a caricature of imagination, although it is a true emblem of perspective.

Imagination is living, perspective only 'lifelike'. It used to say that the camera cannot lie.

Just because it looks only in that immediate way, the camera always looks at and never
into what it sees. "

(Seamon, pg. 246)

It is arguable that a camera on its own is powerless. Only when it is being utilised as a

medium does it get transformed into a powerful tool. A painter has his brush, a

photographer has his camera. Photography as an art form is constantly being questioned,

taking into account the fact that the abundance of cameras and their simplified

instructions allows for everyone to become a photographer, and subsequently, an artist.

Barfield's proclamation that a camera never looks "into what it sees" is misleading,

simply because it is only when the camera is actually being used that subjects can be

explored beyond their present reality. For Roland Barthes, "something has posed in front

of the tiny hole and has remained there forever" (Barthes, pg 78). He speaks about the

fact that photography unearths the confusion between the Real and the Live:

"by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief

that it is alive, because of that delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolutely

superior, somehow eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past ('this-has-been'),

the photograph suggests that it is already dead. "

(Bathes, pg. 79)

What is in front of the camera may be the truth, but when it is frozen into an image, it

enters a new realm. What is depicted on an image does not necessarily correspond to a

given time or space; instead, it survives in an immobile sphere, which has its own
concept of time and space. It is in this way, that the camera is able to offer a new

perspective, to permeate the surface of an object, a person, an event or a place.

With photographs, it is difficult to document reality exactly as it is. Reality becomes

constructed through images. As an example, I will speak about a common occurrence.

Packages containing frozen food habitually have photographs of the given product. The

image of the product fools us into thinking that it looks like that in reality, which is, of

course, not true. We are forced to believe that reality looks like something, while it really

does not. Stretching this example into other areas of life, we arrive at the idea that it is not

possible to successfully analyse and interpret an image if we have no information about

it, simply because photographs on their own cannot narrate (Ross, pg. 8). If we see an

image of two people hitting each other, we cannot infer the reasons behind their vicious

act. What if they are simply play-fighting or having a karate match? All we can do is

accept that they are hitting each other, without knowing why. That is perhaps one of the

faults of photography, that it cannot offer us a complete story, even though the saying

goes that "a picture can tell a thousand words". Without captions, without stories, a

photograph is nothing more that a photographer's offering, his documentation of events;

and without written or spoken input, we risk misinterpreting this documentation of

reality.

In her article "Photography at The Crossroads", Berenice Abbott stresses the fact that in

today's world, "the picture has replaced the word as a means of communication" (Abbott,

pg. 179). According to her, there is a "no more creative medium than photography to

recreate the living world of our time" (pg. 179). This is related to the idea that moments

of our lives have to be saved, preserved in eternity via a visual aid. Sontag analyses this
point further:

"A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the

real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death

mask. While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is

never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the

registering of an emanation (light rays reflected by objects)-a material vestige of its

subject in a way that no painting can."

(Ross, pg. 10)

What is idiosyncratic about photography is that it fosters a connection between the real

world and the image. The image is a distortion of reality, no matter how much it

resembles it. The reason for this is that while a photograph may depict real events, real

people, real objects and real places, it will depend on the photographer's skills, his mood

and his choice of frame. The advantage that a photographer has over artists who work

with other mediums is that he is able to make use of spontaneity. Robert Doisneau's views

on this concept are precious:

"...there is the more calculated gesture, that of seizing an image from the passage of time

and brandishing it as a proof of the existence of one's own universe."

(Doisneau, pg. 6)

In this essay, I am not concerned so much with analysing historical data. Nevertheless, it

is important to point out certain pieces of information. At first, photography was

concerned with realism, with depicting objective reality. 'Primitive' photographers "often
did not think of themselves as artists, but as workers or scientists who had the specific

task of documenting the phenomenal world" (Rogers, pg. 33). Many people were

shocked, when in 1862, the Imperial Court of France declared that photography was

indeed a form of art. The cases of the photographers Mayer and Pierson were studied,

whose defence statement was that "Truth and Beauty are the same for the photographer as

they are for the painter and the sculptor" (Scharf, pg. 217). The reason why many artists

were offended is because for them, photography was concerned with an array of manual

operations and with the mechanism of the camera, as opposed to the study of art and the

perceptiveness that traditional artists gain.

Another significant difference which separates traditional forms of art from photography

is reproduction. Because I work with many mediums, be it photography, painting or

drawing, I am able to personally experience the implications of this factor. Photographs

can be printed over and over again, depending on what purpose they are to serve. A

painting or a drawing can only exist as a single tangible specimen, whereas photographs

can be replaced. It is impossible to create the exact same painting or drawing, because

this artform is bound only to one point in the time-space graph. Of course, this also

means that one cannot take the exact same photograph. Even if there is no visible change

betwenn two seemingly identical photographs, what should be underlined is that the most

basic component of the subjects in the photographs might have migrated, shifted, lost

heat, gained heat, etc. In addition to that, the instants at which two "identical"

photographs would have been taken would be different, as would the thoughts and

emotions that the photographer would have had.

Roger Scruton states that the foremost focal point of photographs is the subject and not
necessarily the style in which it is presented (Ross, pg. 12). Possibly true in some cases, if

the primary interest in a photograph is testimony or proof that something did actually

happen. However, the concept of photography has expanded to the point that we become

interested in both the style and the subject. Once again, we arrive at the idea of

photography as an art form. The painter's brush may constitute a picture of something,

something which is altered from its "real" self, as a result of “having been filtered

through his particular personality" (Dearstyne, pg. 245). Howard Dearstyne underlines

the fact that an artist's possibilities of representation are infinite, while those of a

photographer depend on imagination, on creative genius and how he chooses to work

within the borders of all that is able to be register with his camera (Dearstyne, pg. 245-

246). Selection of the subject varies from photographer to photographer, depending on

what might infuse him with inspiration and move him. In this way, the photographer has

a more acute understanding of what is in front of his eyes, because he is able to scale and

measure the visual significance and beauty of a picture. Abbott says it brilliantly:

"Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a

symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist

techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a

penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term - selectivity."

(Abbott, pg. 183)

Photography was also thought to have brought about a replacement, whereby "artistic

skill was replaced by ingenious mechanism" (Nickel, pg. 552). Douglas R. Nickel, in his

article "History of Photography: State of Research", explores "the cultural need for
representational verisimilitude" (Nickel, pg. 552), describing the desire for reality instead

of distorted imagery. We arrive at the idea of capturing reality. Perhaps, at the time of

photography's early years, people had failed to assume that what is depicted in

photographs is not entirely reality, but rather a fragment of reality. Photography is said to

have been compared to painting to show that personality cannot come into light within

pictures, that a picture does not show a perspective, but rather a standardised vision of a

scene. Beaumont Newhall writes:

"Photography is the immediate, often instantaneous, record of a vision of the external

world, and the fundamental simplicity in securing this record is a factor which must be

considered by the critic. The mark of the individual is not left upon the surface of the

picture; the photographer does not betray his personality so much by craftsmanship as

by the intensity of his vision of the external world. "

(Newhall, pg. 86)

What is particularly captivating about this statement is that the part which stresses that

the personality of the individual does not remain on the surface of the photograph.

Instead, the individual character of a photographer will be within the final outcome of the

picture itself. The personality will be etched into the fibres which make up the

photograph itself.

As an example of a photographer, I wish to discuss Arthur Fellig (1899-1968), or

Weegee, as he was more commonly known. His photographs are special because of they

feature gruesome and sanguinary scenes of violence, such as murders and fires, as well as

immediate emotional aftermaths, such as widows. Although he was a news photographer,

his photographs demonstrate a significant level of individuality and his passion for

registering visually intense scenes into pictures. His nickname is related to the idea of a

Ouija boards, seeing as he was usually at a crime scene before the police. He was proud

of his ability to take exclusive pictures, which would be sent to newspapers around the

United States as soon as possible after he had taken them. In his biography of Weegee,

Kerry William Purcell writes that "in the early years of newspaper photography, the

essential task of the photographer was to illustrate the text; to make literal the words of

the journalist". Weegee was one of the most significant contributors to revolutionising

this and reversing the order, such that it was the journalist who would adapt his story to

the images that are to illustrate it. He would take photographs of scenes from ordinary

lives of individuals, scenes which the public would find astounding, revolting and

possibly, fascinating. Essentially, the photographs of a tabloid would have to allure the

reader into discovering the complete story. Weegee's talents as a news photographer

ensured that this would be the case. With time, the populace had come to acknowledge

his photography as artwork, not merely judging it according to "news worthiness".

Purcell's views on Weegee's photographs are as follows:

"Catching people unawares, at their most vulnerable or exuberant, these images reduce

the gap between viewer and subject to barely touching distance. Blurring the boundaries

of public and private, they compel you to look or turn away-in either case, they charge

you to to make a judgement or to react. As time weakens their historical specificity, the

originality of these photographs becomes even more apparent. Collected together, they

form a lyrical ballad that transcends their original objective of reportage. They are a

visual poem... "

(Purcell, Introduction)

Thackeray says it nicely, when he says that "the two most engaging powers of [a

photographer] are to make new things familiar and familiar things new." That is perhaps

one of the flaws of humanity, that atrocious situations such as war and famine lose their

emotional strength because we are so used to seeing them as recorded images and films.

Photographs have a minor effect on individuals who have seen reality only through

images. Obviously, there is a significant difference between seeing an AIDS victim in

front of your eyes and seeing him on a photograph. Evil becomes banal, horror becomes

routine. Images protect us from the harm that reality may pose; they establish a security

blanket for our psyches. What is between reality and the viewer may be a photograph or a

television screen. This does not mean that the image becomes incapacitated and

ineffective, but that with time, the more we are exposed to given images, the more that

they lose the initial emotional charge that they had. Thinking within the scope of Sontag's

perspective (Ross, pg. 7), we arrive at the following question: with time, do photographs

portraying tragedy, death, joy, grief, excitement or any other emotion (i.e. emotion

associated with a certain documented situation) become art...or were they art to begin

with?

In conclusion, I would like to state that photography is distinctive from other mediums

because it is able to capture reality while invoking the photographer's own vision so that a

scene is no longer as it exists in the real world, but as it exists through the photographer's

eyes. Photography can rarely, if ever, be objective, since a certain picture is presented to

us as being taken by someone whose reasons for choosing specific lighting, specific

frames, specific details and so forth will have a tremendous impact on how the
photograph is to be interpreted. As Robert Heinecken says:

"Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital

objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between

taking a picture and making a photograph. "

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